Strategy & design
Without a handle on strategy and design, you're just moving faster in the wrong direction
Most product teams don't have a strategy problem. But right now, everyone seems obsessed with speed. And speed without signal just means you'll get to wrong faster.
Add to that, decisions get made in rooms full of smart people with strong opinions and no shared evidence. And it feels like artificial intelligence (AI) — on top of distributed teams and shrinking headcount — is making this worse, not better. It's never been easier to generate, prototype, and ship without customer signal.
If strategy is knowing what's worth building and design is how it becomes real, most teams are skipping both right now.
Let's figure out what's actually slowing you down. Book a 25-min consult.
Select case studies
AI vibe coding app, early-stage
Replay's team thought they needed to build for ops managers, but the Bullseye Customer Sprint surfaced a sharper signal — independent builders shipping production apps with real economic stakes, people who needed to understand what broke, not just have it fixed. We ran 4-5 Listening Cycles to test each hypothesis shift, drawing on their existing customer base, devrel conversations, and Discord patterns. The customer definition that emerged drove the relaunch, the messaging, and two new product lines.
Healthcare two-sided marketplace
Healthcare is confusing by design — patients don't know what anything costs until the bill shows up. As part of Sesame's founding team, we used guerrilla interviews to cut through the noise fast, validating the idea and concepts for "Hotel Tonight for doctors." Browse, pick, book, done. That clarity drove the product from zero to 500+ providers in about four mos, backed by a Figma-Storybook design system built to scale.
Regional utility company
A regional utility's R&D lab was running 70+ projects — and nobody in the broader company knew it. The work was real but the visibility wasn't. Using foundational research and a series of Design Sprints, we built the Customer Energy Control Center (CECC) prototype and a set of organizational dashboards that gave the lab a process and language the rest of the company could finally read, moving the group from operational invisibility to strategic recognition.
Tier 1 bank-integrated fintech
Pipeline had stalled, sales down 23% over 18 mos. Customer interviews at first confirmed the positioning hypothesis, but then challenged it. CFOs liked the idea but controllers lived the problem. Found the Goldilocks Zone ($30–$100M firms), reframed from "cheaper processor" to "operational sanity," and ran 13 more interviews as part of a Listening Cycle to confirm. Result: higher retention, shorter sales cycles, and a reset product roadmap.
Shep — founding team, pandemic, acquisition
Led strategic pivot from SMB to enterprise after discovering that enterprise orgs — not smaller teams — had the compliance liability that made Shep a must-have. Our Chrome browser extension addressed duty of care gaps during business travel, surviving a global pandemic that wiped out 92% of the market, and ultimately leading to acquisition by Flight Centre.
Fortune 100 dental insurance provider
Spending most of its energy reacting — claims, complaints, churn — a Fortune 100 dental insurer needed to get ahead of the problem. We combined IoT smart toothbrush data with behavioral rewards to design a preventive care engagement model for millions of members. Using our Clear Path Forward, we created a proof of concept that shifted the conversation from reactive customer service to proactive health outcomes, and gave the team a concrete roadmap to take to leadership.
Unified customer interaction platform
Bank of America's relationship managers were working across 10+ business lines with no unified view of the customer in front of them. Through 20+ stakeholder interviews and 12+ validation sessions, we built a 360° customer view platform that gave them the full picture in one place — so personalized service became the default, not the exception.
While each project in our portfolio represents a unique success story, some have disclosure and privacy constraints. Schedule a 1:1 conversation to learn about specific outcomes and methods that might resonate with your goals.
Here's what working together looks like
Some teams need us to lead the whole thing — the research, the facilitation, the artifacts. Others want a thinking partner while their team does the making. And some already have a designer or agency in place and just need sharper judgment at the wheel.
We've worked all three ways, sometimes in the same engagement. What stays consistent is the approach: we don't make things until we understand what's worth making, and we don't hand over a deliverable without making sure your team knows what to do with it.
The work usually lives somewhere across customer discovery and sprint facilitation, product strategy and positioning, design and prototyping, and team coaching. Often it's more than one.
This is a no pitch zone
Tell us where you're at
We'll talk through your situation and be straight about whether our approach makes sense for you and your team
Phone: +1 917-720-6388
Email: heythere@howthisworks.co
Book a call: howthisworks.co/start
Based in San Francisco, CA, working globally
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